Assigment #12

The Black Cat

      The short story "The Black Cat" is not just a story about a man, his wife and a black cat; this story uses symbolism to send us a deeper meaning after reading the short story. The way he describes he’s emotions and the way he sees the difference in his personalities are evidence of the wisdom the short story has.
     In the story “The Black Cat” the author is trying to send us a message, he uses symbolism to tell us that this is the way humans are in real life. Meaning that we human know when we are wrong and still ignore the fact that we feel the change. The man in the story describes that he felt the change in his personality and uses quotes like “It was no longer me” to tell us that he knew exactly what the change in his personality was. To me, the deeper meaning is that the man in the story was the black cat in the story. What I mean by the protagonist being the black cat is that he was the bad guy in the story.
     What this story makes me think is, How many people or criminals know that the person killing, stealing, and doing the bad stuff are not them but still ignore it? In the story the protagonist tells us that he had forgotten who he was, that he knew it was not him, the anger inside of him was not really who he was; but he still killed the cats, he still killed his wife and let that other person that he didn’t like take over him. That person who he used to be was caring, compassionate, and had a sweet personality but as this creature took over him, he grew inconsiderate and had no feeling towards anything but the horrible feeling of his personality changing and him become someone he didn’t really knew.
     The first cat symbolizes his acts, meaning the change in his personality was there and he had transformed to a person that was not him. The alcohol and all of the bad things he was doing were stronger than who he used to be and his personality changed completely. The second cat symbolizes the chance he had to make a change in his past, the spot meant the past was always going to be there is something you can’t really get rid of but that was his chance to change that, to go back to the persona he used to be and put everything back together, but he didn’t and gave up the person he used to be.
      By him lying to the cops about who he was (a nice guy) and made it seem that he was caring and all. This also send the message that us human know who we are and everything seems easy, but also when they believed him he kept on lying confident about it and that’s also how we are. When we know we lied about something but our parents believe us we want to make it seems all confident and keep on lying because they will believe us either way. He’s story relates to our everyday lives in one way or another.
     The short story “The Black Cat” relates to our everyday lives because without us thinking about it people change and do the things we wish we wouldn’t have done. We never know if this is what happens to murders that kill every day, maybe someone else also took over them and became the persons that they are now. We never think about ourselves doing it, we know the change is there but yet still ignore it and become someone you dislike or wouldn’t want to be. We never think about when we lie and they believe us we only lie more to sound confident and even though our lies aren’t as bad as murdering it’s still a lie.